The Lion Queen -- No Spoiler Review

 The Lion Queen

System: PC 

Price: Free 

Voice Acting: No 

ESRB Rating: Not Rated, Reviewer Suggests T (13+) 

Overall Rating: Stole 6.5/10 ♥s 

Pre-Game Perception: A (very brief) story about a princess choosing a suitor to be King, and determining the fate of Brunaria.

Morning-After Reflection: It felt like a snippet of a bigger story where we get to play 2 hours of some sort of epic, and while interesting, it was short lived.

Story: “This is a story of a Princess... 

A story of Kingdoms and Empires... 

Of Dragons and Knights…

Of Love and War…

Follow Princess Zella of Brunaria and help navigate her journey to Queenship as she chooses between following her kingdom's traditions and abdicating the throne! 

Choose between four love interests, each of which will take the future of the Brunaria in a different direction!” 

Interest Rating: 6/10. I thought the art was cute, and the story didn’t give anything away about what I might find, except war, love, and dragons. I knew before starting that it was done for an Itch.io Otomejam - meaning the developer typically gets a month to make a complete game - so I knew it would be short. At 7k words, it’s the shortest VN I’ve read. It’s also the developers first VN/otome, so I was curious, but cautious.

MC: Our MC for The Lion Queen is Zella, a red-headed cutie that we don’t get a whole lot of background on, but more than the other characters. Her name cannot be changed, but her personality can be aggressive, demanding, depressed, lacking reason, or innocent; yes, literally all of those. For a short game (maybe because it’s short) you get a lot of control over how Zella acts and reacts. The only times you don’t really get a choice are when it comes to her ability to fight, and… that’s about it. Which I think is swell. Giving the reader the chance to make a meek and demure MC or a snarky and/or commanding MC is pretty cool. I rarely see it work so well when a story needs to progress along a (mainly) linear path like this. And having her make the choice about fighting no matter what type of MC Zella ends up as is also pretty cool, imo. Stronk women who are women are my cup of tea.

Likability Rating: Yu. Zella was what I wanted her to be, so of course I’d rate her highly. Since the game is short, there aren’t a lot of options for interaction and reaction, but enough that I could mold Zella the way I liked, and feel like that came through.

Plot: Seeing as how the game is only 7k words, there’s not a large, complicated plot to work with, but there is a plot. It seems that Zella is the Princess of Brunaria, and in order to become Queen, she must wed due to tradition. Her parents were assassinated five years ago, and the Council has been running the country in her stead until she weds, a point she promised to come to within a month before the game starts. So what about the war and dragons and things, right? That all comes up during the short story, and if I were to explain where it fits in, there wouldn’t be a reason to play this (free) short VN.

Replayability Rating: ★★★☆☆ There are a few gems in going back to see what responses you get with certain choices, but for the most part the game is very linear with choices not mattering until the “choose him!” one comes up. Each ending is different, so give it a go. And you can load the (primarily) last choice to see each one.

Love Interests: I’m going to briefly introduce you to the love interests that Zella gets the chance to wed, bed, or behead. No, I’m kidding, she doesn’t behead any of the suitors. If that’s the type of game you were hoping for, you don’t get the opportunity here. But these are going to be very brief introductions because it is a very brief game, where we learn very little about the characters. There isn’t a recommended route order, and most LIs have one ending. There is only one that has two, which you will figure out who that is when you pick them because you get a choice after the “choose them!” decision. So, I’m just going to throw them at you in the order that they appear.

Baio is our best boy bodyguard. I’m sorry… I love alliteration. But really, Baio is Zella’s bodyguard, who appears to accompany her most places around the castle unless she tells him to leave her. Which happens. I guess there’s probably a relationship of some sort there, but it’s not really explored, and it doesn’t seem like Zella is aware of any feelings from this blushy boy. I get it, it’s a short game, and we have to learn a lot in like 15 minutes of time, but that really gives me less to work with since I can’t comment on how cute, clumsy, or contrary a character is.

Clare is… another fighter-type? She’s not even really a suitor, but she does the fighting thing when needed. I’m not sure exactly who she is, perhaps the Captain of the Guard for the castle. She’s referred to as Captain, but I don’t think it ever explicitly stated a Captain of what… She does order the castle guard around, so I think that might be the case. And yes, she is a female character. I suppose she also has some sort of relationship with Zella that we’re not made aware of, because she also becomes a love interest kind of out of nowhere. But, she is able to be chosen, so… there you go. Oh, I guess she’s kinda… punchy and stabby? The typical tropey female knight deal.

Apparently, Akemi is our childhood friend. He’s some sort of warrior/suitor or something. He’s a Prince of some place I already forgot because it was only brought up twice in the same conversation and I didn’t write it down in my notes. I’m terrible, I know. I guess he commands most of the armies of Brunaria or something? I get the feeling he’s just looking for some power, as you find out he’s willing to marry almost anyone since he has promised his hand to more than just Zella. Despite this, you can still choose Akemi as your suitor at the end of the game, which I didn’t on my first run because of story reasons.

Lastly, we meet Teelon, who is exactly the kind of suitor you’d expect to make an appearance. He gets the most time actually self-glorifying to Zella. I think he has the most spoken text out of all the LIs. And he kind of needs it because he’s the only character from outside of the Kingdom. But we also get more story about Teelon because of this, so it kind of feels like he’s supposed to be the chosen one. He’s self-assured and cocky and though you don’t get an option to knock him down a few pegs, I guess not choosing him does the same thing if you want to headcanon it that way.

Boy Crazy Rating: 78%. They’re not bad boys, they’re just very shallow characters due to the constraints of the short story. I don’t know much about any of them, except for Cocky Boy 1 and Cocky Boy 2.

Romance: Hmmm. Well… It does lead to marriage, and the story centers around Princess Zella getting married, but it had no real romance in the game. The first time we’re supposed to be given a reason to be wooed, it’s interrupted and never actually gets started. The next time for the wooing is basically just one LI talking about himself and why he’s the best choice, so it seems more like a proposition (as I suppose it worked in that time) than any romance. And then you get the confessions, and they’re cute, but they’re not romantic at all, imo. If the game wasn’t about getting married, I wouldn’t even consider it a romance game, because it focuses on the disputes more than the plot of Princess Zella getting married.

Heart Palpitation Rating: F. I made Zella care about her people, but that isn’t romantic. The cute story fails to deliver romance, and keeps it strictly political. Might be your thing, but it’s not mine.

Spice: Yeah, no. The spiciest descriptions and dialogues we get are from the sexy, evil villainess who shows up to wreak havoc. I mean, I dig the sexy evil characters, so I’m not complaining that she existed, just that it was a rather tropey character to introduce as the only source of blatant sex appeal. I suppose Akemi and Teelon are also quite cocky and believe themselves to be sexy, at least that’s what I got from their character types. But even then, there’s no tension or build up and I’m left wanting.

Cold Shower Rating: Fail. The story is fast-paced and short and doesn’t give us time to build any sort of spice. You won’t have a burning need to cool down, so put your fans, water, and ice away; you’ll be fine.

Angst: The game is short, guys. I keep bringing this up because I want people to understand there isn’t going to be as much angst in a game that barely has time to introduce the characters, nevermind giving them ample exploration in their backgrounds to build that angsty angst that I so love. Having said that, it’s kinda a dark game. No, no trigger warnings about non-con or things, but it is descriptive in the violence, bordering on some textual gore content. This is why I suggested the T rating for the game. There is blood by the buckets in the text, and a few screen splashes of cartoon blood paint. It’s just paint, right?

Drama Llama Rating: 6/10. Heavy violence brings this rating to a solid six. The drama llama seems a bit bitey today, let’s not try to get close enough to pet.

Voice Acting: None. There are a few sound bites of laughter, but they’re not anything like voice acting. I’d call that SFX if anything.

Expression Rating: N/A

Art: The art is better than what I’d consider generic. Each character has their own sprite, but they’re just on screen when they’re speaking without any changes in the movement or dress. However! They do have a few different expressions, so that was cool. More than I expected. And there’s blinking, which is also pretty cool. I like the blinking. Mouth flapping? Not so much. So I’m glad they just frozenly stare, and blink, without moving their lips.

It’s not the most beautiful style I’ve seen, but I can appreciate the simplicity of it, and I think the characters are cute in their own right. I think about how this is basically a zero budget game done in a short period of time, and the art is better than what I expected it to be, especially since the writing is pretty good, imo. Backgrounds largely are patterned so no places had to be drawn, and I find it cute and not at all distracting. Would I have liked some background art? Yes, sure. Does this work? Yeah, sure. Will I complain? Probably.

Still Picture Rating: ★★★☆☆ Many character. Such unique. Very pattern.

CGs: There are no CGs in this game. And I don’t know what to do in this section because of it… Do I exclude it from the total? Do I include it as a markdown? I guess we’ll see when we get to the end!

Look at this Photograph Rating: N/A

UI/Mechanics: I kinda like the UI. It’s pretty standard, but the text is one I don’t often see used for games - probably because it’s slightly difficult to read - but I like the look of it. I’m also one of those kids that thought papyrus font was the coolest shit when I was in middle school. I wanted to spell papyrus with the font, but apparently Google doesn’t offer it in their document section? I looked! It’s not there. So my opinion on text isn’t necessarily a good reference to judge by. Anyways, there are waaaaay more than enough save spaces. A Help section that explains the keyboard keys and mouse clicks. And volume controls for music and SFX. There are also options on what text to skip (only read is default), and to turn off the mini-game that’s within the game. In other words, it’s a bit better than standard, but it’s not amazing.

Now, the mini-game is a… You know, I don’t know what I’d call it. It is explained clearly before you embark on it, and I thought it was a neat little addition to the game. Basically, directional arrows pop up around the screen with a timer under it, and you tap the corresponding directional keys to “complete” that arrow and move on to the next. If you fail, the game just laughs at you (no, really, it laughs) and tells you something along the lines of “Don’t give up! Try again!” And you start over with another set of random directions until you can pass the mini-game. As I said, this can be turned off, and although I thought it was neat and fun, on the third time it popped up, I couldn’t pass it. The timer was too quick for my (apparently) slow-ass reflexes.

What’s this button do? Rating: B. A little more than the typical UI, including a mini-game that was fun but simple.

Errors: Good news, everybody! There are very minimal errors in The Lion Queen. One word was missing, which was reported to the dev before I could notify them, and happened literally in the middle of me writing this review; so they fixed it right away. And one sentence was difficult for me to understand what was happening, so perhaps that will be reworded. That’s it. It is an Original English Language Visual Novel (OELVN), so I’d expect it to be rather well written since there’s no translation needed. It’s also very short, so I can’t imagine proof-reading the whole story would take very long. I tend to judge OELVN’s a bit tougher than our localized games, but two errors seem incredibly reasonable and understandable.

Here there be Bugs Rating: Pass. There’s nothing here. It’s new, it’s shiny, there wasn’t even time for the ants to start building a hill in the yard. Literally the best game when it comes to errors that I’ve reviewed.

Background Music: Okay, okay, I know I keep making jokes about how I don’t have a thing for OSTs, and then it looks like I totally do, but I really don’t. I don’t! I only have like… five OSTs from games I’ve reviewed, I think? That’s not much! I might have more… But the BGM is pretty suiting for The Lion Queen. I was surprised, honestly. There’s a song with vocals on the title screen, and that’s not something you come across often with indie games, especially first time ones. I like the arrangement during the game for the BGM, it always enhances the scene. I wouldn’t go out of my way to buy it, but I wouldn’t silence the game because I think it worked really well and only added to it.

BY OUR RATINGS COMBINED!: Oh ho! You thought you were done, didn’t you? Don’t worry, this will be short. Sometimes my individual ratings do not always add up to my overall rating; this is because I find a reason to rate the game based on things that are not listed in my (very) long review. I couldn’t section everything. Sometimes price factors in. Sometimes personal tastes. Basically, what it comes down to is would I buy this game knowing everything I know? Would I recommend it to a friend? No doubt. The Lion Queen is a free game in the first place, and though there are some issues that I find with it, I think it’s a neat, short game that deserves a look. I enjoyed the story. I enjoyed the overall experience. I’d suggest it to friends because I think it deserves at least a glance. And really, it’s 7k words, that’s less than an hour of your time to take a peek at this dev’s first try at an otome VN. You really don’t have anything to lose except time, and I think the time is worth it.